France's zero tolerance for anorexia

A shocking new Ad campaign in the usually pro-thin country has promted calls for a law to combat the eating disorder

Alongside the catwalk shows, the gossip and the glamorous parties, Paris fashion week was dominated by a billboard this year. It wasn't for a glossy designer brand or an upmarket beauty house: it was a black and white picture of an anorexic model crouching ashamedly on the floor.

For a country known for its obsession with skinny women (as the title of that bestseller goes: French Women Don't Get Fat), the response has been surprising. Rather than greeting the campaign with a Gallic shrug, Valérie Boyer, the Marseilles deputy, is now trying to bring in an anti-anorexia law. It states that it will become a criminal offence to "encourage another person to seek excessive thinness . . . which could expose them to a risk of death or endanger their health", and it has magazines, fashion shoots and skinny models in its sights. Offenders risk two years in prison or a £24,000 fine.